Filmmaker Hitomi Kamanaka: "We need to face the problem otherwise it will never be solved..."

They think they have been contaminated and the country has abandoned them. They can't do anything about it so they better live without worrying.

A lot of people think like this. Today I read in the newspaper that the children of Fukushima say they will die anyway, so there's no need to study...

It is not only the cancer risk that grows. For example, heart attacks also. Cesium goes into the muscles...The risk of strokes also grows...Diabetes also...

In spite of that, they say everything is fine.

This is because these are diseases anyone can have...

Concerning the accident, we all have to face this: Face the fact that we've been contaminated and that it's not over, that there is still no serious compensation even though we lost our way of life, and that for a long time, our health will be exposed to danger.

Can we just go along saying, " Everything is fine."

We need to face the problem otherwise it will never be solved.

For many years, Japanese electricity companies have hidden information. In 2007, it was revealed that nuclear power plants had hidden many accidents. On this occasion, a complete report was ordered, with many details. It revealed 456 accidents. Among them, there had been very serious accidents. And they had hidden everything...

We lost trust...

They knew there was a meltdown but they didn't say it.

To avoid the explosion and release internal pressure, they vent radioactive vapor into the air, releasing a lot of radiation. But when they did this, they didn't inform the population to escape in a certain direction. They didn't reveal the quantity released into the air. They didn't say anything.

And it was only after the accident, one, two, three months later, that the inhabitants of the cities nearby, Futaba, Okuma, or Minami-Soma, finally learnt about the facts, one after the other.

This was an unbelievable situation.

They were not prepared for crisis management, although these facts were openly revealed, one year has passed, and there is still no one to take responsibility.

Before and after the disaster, the very same people are still in charge. It is an incredible situation.

If they had changed to new people, people we can trust, it would have been different...

---

Hitomi Kamanaka is a Japanese documentary filmmaker known particularly for her films on the danger of atomic power and the nuclear industry in Japan. In 2012, she directed a movie on internal contamination where she interviews 4 doctors from Japan and Russia who studied the consequences of Hiroshima, Tchernobyl, and now Fukushima.